h of this work,
but there was rather an undue proportion at first owing to the fact that
it was shouldered on to him by the other two--he being the beginner. He
suspected as much after a little time, but by that time he was beginning
to make friends with his companions and things were not so bad.

These two, although they did not figure vastly in his life, introduced
him to conditions and personalities in the Chicago newspaper world which
broadened him and presented points of view which were helpful. The elder
of the two, the "dean," was dressy and art-y; his name was Horace Howe.
The other, Jeremiah Mathews, Jerry for short, was short and fat, with a
round, cheerful, smiling countenance and a wealth of coarse black hair.
He loved chewing tobacco, was a little mussy about his clothes, but
studious, generous and good natured. Eugene found that he had several
passions, one for good food, another for oriental curios and a third for
archaeology. He was alive to all that was going on in the world, and was
utterly without any prejudices, social, moral or religious. He liked his
work, and whistled or talked as he did it. Eugene took a secret like for
him from the beginning.

It was while working on this paper that Eugene first learned that he
really could write. It came about accidentally for he had abandoned the
idea that he could ever do anything in newspaper work, which was the
field he had originally contemplated. Here there was great need for
cheap Sunday specials of a local character, and in reading some of
these, which were given to him for illustration, he came to the
conclusion that he could do much better himself.

"Say," he asked Mathews, "who writes the articles in here?" He was
looking over the Sunday issue.

"Oh, the reporters on the staff--anyone that wants to. I think they buy
some from outsiders. They only pay four dollars a column."

Eugene wondered if they would pay him, but pay or no pay he wanted to do
them. Maybe they would let him sign his name. He saw that some were
signed. He suggested he believed he could do that sort of thing but
Howe, as a writer himself, frowned on this. He wrote and drew. Howe's
opposition piqued Eugene who decided to try when the opportunity
offered. He wanted to write about the Chicago River, which he thought he
could illustrate effectively. Goose Island, because of the description
he had read of it several years before, the simple beauties of the city
parks where he liked